The Kafkaesque character of this litigation is difficult to deny. Having failed to receive a summons that may have been improperly served upon them, Marilyn and Michael Elliott learned that a default judgment had been entered against them, foreclosing on their home because of a mortgage that was allegedly in default. The home was sold in a sheriff?s sale to the lending bank. Feeling confused and suspicious, they turned to the Indiana Attorney General, who directed them to file a complaint with the Comptroller of the Currency. The Comptroller?s investigation revealed that Chase Bank, the ostensible plaintiff herein, is entirely unaware of the foreclosure proceeding. Moreover, Chase?s records show that the mortgage was paid in full in 2001. Chase, therefore, executed and recorded a satisfaction of mortgage. Notwithstanding the satisfaction of mortgage, Chase?s loan servicer—Ocwen Bank—continued to prosecute this action in Chase?s name, attempting to force the Elliotts out of their home even though there has never been a trial and the lending bank has declared that the mortgage was paid in full. Finding this situation untenable, we reverse and remand for trial.

Appellants-defendants Marilyn L. Elliott and Michael S. Elliott appeal the trial court?s order denying their motion for relief from judgment on the foreclosure complaint of JPMorgan Chase Bank (Chase). The Elliotts raise two issues, one of which we find dispositive: that they are entitled to relief from judgment pursuant to Trial Rule 60(B) because, during the pendency of this litigation, Chase executed and recorded a satisfaction of the mortgage. Finding that the Elliotts are entitled to relief from judgment, we reverse and remand for trial.

In this case, eight plaintiffs allege that a debt buying
company, a law firm, a process service company, and others
engaged in a “massive scheme to fraudulently obtain default
judgments against them and more than 100,000 other consumers in
state court. Plaintiffs allege that defendants did so by
engaging in “sewer servicer” — the practice of failing to serve a
summons and complaint and then filing a fraudulent affidavit
attesting to service. When the debtors failed to appear in court
because they did not have notice of the lawsuits, defendants
obtained default judgments against them.

Plaintiffs sue on behalf of themselves and all others
similarly situated. Their second amended complaint (the
“Complaint”) asserts claims under the Fair Debt Collection
Practices Act (the “FDCPA”)1,5 U.S.C. 5 1692 et sea., the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), 18
U.S.C. 5 1961 et sea., New York General Business Law (“GBL”) §
349, and New York Judiciary Law 5 487. Plaintiffs seek
injunctive relief, declaratory relief, and damages.
Defendants move to dismiss the Complaint pursuant to
Rules 9 (b) , 12 (b) (1) , and 12 (b) (6) of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure, challenging the sufficiency of every claim and the
subject matter jurisdiction of this Court. For the reasons that
follow, the motions to dismiss are denied in part and granted in
part.

CALAMITY Summonses are being misplaced or forged by servers CAUSES Critics say sloppiness and fraud leading to sudden spike

The foreclosure case against Patrick Jeffs was thrown out of court when a Jacksonville judge ruled that the summons to inform him of the lawsuit was counterfeit.

Mark Browne was in Iraq when a process server tried to give his mother in New Mexico a summons to inform him that his house in Jacksonville was being foreclosed on. She didn’t accept it, but the server signed a document that said she did. A judge threw that out, too.

Nancy Rush sold her Jacksonville condo in March, walking away poorer after the short sale and was getting on with her life when her phone rang with unlikely news: She was in foreclosure. A week after she unloaded the unit at Kendall Town in Arlington, a Jacksonville judge ordered the home sold at auction to settle a $190,000 mortgage debt, even though Rush had never received a summons saying she was being sued. “I didn’t even know there was a court date,” Rush said. “It scared the crap out of me.”

Even the summons, the simple but important legal notice required to inform homeowners that they are being foreclosed on, has not been immune to the massive problems surrounding what has become known in Florida and across the nation as the foreclosure mess.

The Times-Union has reviewed documents where the same name with obviously different signatures was used to certify that papers were served to the homeowner.

While there is no simple way to know how often every type of irregularity occurs, there is documentation showing a sharp rise in one narrow area of concern.

Instances where summonses entrusted to servers have been reported as lost, once fairly rare, have skyrocketed, making it harder to document the fate of important paperwork. From barely more than 100 annually six years ago, more than 2,000 summonses have been lost in Duval County in each of the last two years.

Critics attribute the problems to both sloppiness and fraud.

Tammie Lou Kapusta, a paralegal in the office of David Stern, the foreclosure law firm at the center of much of the investigations, described the serving process as “a complete mess” during a recent deposition. Renters were served rather than property owners, Kapusta told the Florida Attorney General’s Office. An affidavit of service – the legal document required to verify that the summons was served properly – would be filed when the summons hadn’t been served, she said.

(UPDATED)

(Originally published 7/22/10 at 5:20 p.m.) Chicagoan Rich Gregory figured it was only a matter of time before he’d hear from his bank after falling behind on his second mortgage. But when he was summonsed to foreclosure court in 2008, he realized his bank wasn’t interested in negotiating.

Gregory noticed something “goofy” about the summons. Attached to it was a copy of the server’s credentials, issued on the letterhead of former Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Morgan Finley, a man convicted of extortion and ousted from office more than two decades earlier. “I thought, ‘This guy’s not licensed. He’s not authorized to do it,” Gregory said.

Turns out that Cook County Judge Dorothy Kinnaird, who oversees the Chancery Division, issued a court order in June 2007, allowing lenders and servicers to sidestep the Cook County Sheriff’s office and hire private agencies to deliver foreclosure summons. The idea was to free up a flood of new foreclosure cases. Lawmakers had toyed with the idea decades earlier. Ultimately, they decided that having a neutral party – primarily the Sheriff’s office – delivering court documents would avert the sort of conflict that’s brewing in the Cook County court system. Homeowners are now challenging the legitimacy of their summonses, and some are saying that they were never called to court to plead their case.

We hear that a lawsuit is coming down to challenge the court’s use of special process servers.

As far as Marty Stack, legal council to the Sheriff’s office is concerned, these questionable summonses could threaten the legitimacy of potentially thousands of local foreclosure cases. “Basically, all of these people could come back to vacate their case,” Stack said. “The judge has no right to take away their due process.”